Chapter II

"Do go then, please, and call on the Bols," Kitty said to her
husband, when he came in to see her at eleven o'clock before going
out. "I know you are dining at the club; papa put down your name.
But what are you going to do in the morning?"

"I am only going to Katavassov," answered Levin.

"Why so early?"

"He promised to introduce me to Metrov. I wanted to talk to him
about my work. He's a distinguished savant from Peterburg," said
Levin.

"Yes; wasn't it his article you were praising so? Well, and after
that?" said Kitty.

"I shall go to the court, perhaps, about my sister's business."

"And the concert?" she queried.

"I shan't go there all alone."

"No? Do go; there are going to be some new things.... That used to
interest you so. I should certainly go."

"Well, anyway, I shall come home before dinner," he said, looking at
his watch.

"Put on your frock coat, so that you can go straight to call on
Countess Bol."

"But is it absolutely necessary?"

"Oh, absolutely! He has been to see us. Come, what is it? You go in,
sit down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up, and go away."

"Oh, you wouldn't believe it! I've got so out of the way of all this
that it makes me feel positively ashamed. It's such a horrible thing
to do! A complete outsider walks in, sits down, stays on with
nothing to do, wastes their time and upsets himself, and then goes
away!"

Kitty laughed.

"Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married,
didn't you?"

"Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I'm so
unaccustomed to it that, by God, I'd sooner go two days running
without my dinner than pay this call! One's so ashamed! I feel all the
while that they're annoyed, that they're saying: What has he come
for?"

"No, they won't. I'll answer for that," said Kitty, looking into his
face with a laugh. She took his hand. "Well, good-by.... Do go,
please."

He was just going out after kissing his wife's hand, when she
stopped him.

"Kostia, do you know I've only fifty roubles left?"

"Oh, all right, I'll go to the bank and get some. How much?" he
said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.

"No, wait a minute." She held his hand. "Let's talk about it, it
worries me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessarily, but money seems
simply to fly away. We don't manage well, somehow."

"Not at all," he said with a little cough, looking at her from under
his brows.

That cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense
dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself. He certainly was
displeased, not at so much money being spent, but at being reminded of
what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget.

"I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance
on the mill. We shall have money enough in any case."

"Yes, but I'm afraid that altogether it's too much...."

"Not at all, not at all," he repeated. "Well, good-by, darling."

"No, I'm really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How nice
it would have been in the country! As it is, I'm worrying you all, and
we're wasting our money."

"Not at all, not at all. Not once since I've been married have I
said that things could have been better than they are...."

"Truly?" she said, looking into his eyes.

He had said it without thinking, simply to console her. But when
he glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened
questioningly on him, he repeated it with his whole heart. "I was
positively forgetting her," he thought. And he remembered what was
before them, so soon to come.

"Will it be soon? How do you feel?" he whispered, taking her two
hands.

"I have so often thought so, that now I don't think about it, or
know anything about it."

"And you're not frightened?"

She smiled contemptuously.

"Not the least little bit," she said.

"Well, if anything happens, I shall be at Katavassov's."

"No, nothing will happen, and don't think about it. I'm going for
a walk on the boulevard with papa. We're going to see Dolly. I shall
expect you before dinner. Oh, yes! Do you know that Dolly's position
is becoming utterly impossible? She's in debt all round; she hasn't
a penny. We were talking yesterday with mamma and Arsenii" (this was
her sister's husband, Lvov), "and we determined to send you with him
to talk to Stiva. It's really unbearable. One can't speak to papa
about it.... But if you and he..."

"Why, what can we do?" said Levin.

"You'll be at Arsenii's, anyway; talk to him- he will tell you
what we decided."

"Oh, I agree to everything Arsenii thinks beforehand. I'll go and
see him. By the way, if I do go to the concert, I'll go with
Natalie. Well, good-by."

On the steps Levin was stopped by his old servant Kouzma, who had
been with him before his marriage, and now looked after their
household in town.

"Little Adonis" (that was the left shaft horse brought up from the
country) "has been shod anew, but she is still lame," he said. "What
does Your Honor wish to be done?"

During the first part of their stay in Moscow, Levin had used his
own horses brought up from the country. He had tried to arrange this
part of their expenses in the best and cheapest way possible; but it
appeared that their own horses came dearer than hired horses, and they
still hired additional horses.

"Send for the veterinary- there may be a bruise."

"And for Katerina Alexandrovna?" asked Kouzma.

Levin was not by now struck as he had been at first by the fact that
to get in Moscow from the Vozdvizhenka to the Ssivtzev-Vrazhek he
had to have two powerful horses put into a heavy carriage, to take the
carriage a quarter of a versta through the snowy mush and to keep it
standing there four hours, paying five roubles every time.

Now it seemed quite natural.

"Hire a pair for our carriage from the livery stable," said he.

"Yes, sir."

And so, simply and easily, thanks to the facilities of town life,
Levin settled a question which, in the country, would have called
for so much personal trouble and exertion, and, going out on the
steps, he called a sleigh, sat down, and drove to the Nikitskaia. On
the way he thought no more of money, but mused on the introduction
that awaited him to the Peterburg savant, a writer on sociology, and
what he would say to him about his book.

Only during the first days of his stay in Moscow Levin had been
struck by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country,
unproductive but inevitable, that was expected of him on every side.
But by now he had grown used to it. That had happened to him in this
matter which is said to happen to drunkards- the first glass sticks in
the throat, the second flies down like a hawk, but after the third
they're like tiny little birds. When Levin had changed his first
hundred-rouble note to pay for liveries for his footman and hall
porter he could not help reflecting that these liveries were of no use
to anyone- but they were indubitably necessary, to judge by the
amazement of the Princess and Kitty when he suggested that they
might do without liveries- that these liveries would cost the wages of
two laborers for the summer- that is, would pay for about three
hundred working days from Easter to the fast of Advent, and each a day
of hard work from early morning to late evening- and that
hundred-rouble note did stick in his throat. But the next note,
changed to pay for providing a dinner for their relations, that cost
twenty-eight roubles, though it did excite in Levin the reflection
that twenty-eight roubles meant nine chetverts of oats, which men
would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and threshed and
winnowed and sifted and sown- this next one he parted with more
easily. And now the notes he changed no longer aroused such
reflections, and they flew off like little birds. Whether the labor
devoted to obtaining the money corresponded to the pleasure given by
what was bought with it, was a consideration he had long ago
dismissed. His business calculation that there was a certain price
below which he could not sell certain grain was forgotten too. The
rye, for the price of which he had so long held out, had been sold for
fifty kopecks a chetvert cheaper than it had been fetching a month
ago. Even the consideration that with such an expenditure he could not
go on living for a year without debt, even that had no force. Only one
thing was essential: to have money in the bank, without inquiring
where it came from, so as to know that one had the wherewithal to
buy meat for tomorrow. And this condition had hitherto been fulfilled;
he had always had the money in the bank. But now the money in the bank
had gone, and he could not quite tell where to get the next
installment. And this it was which, at the moment when Kitty had
mentioned money, had disturbed him; but he had no time to think
about it. He drove off, thinking of Katavassov and the meeting with
Metrov which was before him.